Humanistic Pep Talk

[JM]

[yah, I'm venting]


Just now I listened to another humanistic pep talk styled sermon.


Lord have mercy!


Please stop with the 3 point sermons.

Enough of the the human schemes to manipulate God.

Just read the word and offer an exgesis of it, don’t exegete your family, or tell a cute story…tell us about the text!

 

[kenrapoza]

The other day I drove by a church in my town, I've never seen it before, it may be new. They appear to meet in an old former Episcoplal stone church building, complete with stained glass. But, their name was something like "Community Fellowship Church" or one of those non-denomenational seeker places. Anyways, I went on to their website to see what they were all about, and they had links to video sermons of theirs. So I watched a sermon on Rom. 8. Now - I'm telling the truth here - his take away from Rom. 8, the main point of the sermon, was that God calls us to be extraordinary people, not ordinary people! I couldn't believe that a central text like that could be distorted and misunderstood so badly. It was an unmitigated disaster!

 

[GQ Chris]

^Most of what passes for sermons in a lot of churches today, especially in the contemporvana/charismatic/pentecostal is "therapeutic deism" or how to "live better".

I got so sick of it, that's why I left and started going to a Reformed Church.

 

[Pete_Martinez]

You know it's funny because I would always hear their lovey dovey sermons and i'd feel oh so ooey gooey on the inside. (Great adjectives, huh?) So I'd go home and open the bible to find out more about fluffy puff marshmallow God and closing the book in terror and thinking, "What book are they reading from?! This God isn't fluffy!" And that's where I started learning more about the real God.

 

[JM]

A. W. Pink:

The substitution of so-called "practical" preaching for the doctrinal exposition which it has supplanted is the root cause of many of the evil maladies which now afflict the church of God. The reason why there is so little depth, so little intelligence, so little grasp of the fundamental verities of Christianity, is because so few believers have been established in the faith, through hearing expounded and through their own personal study of the doctrines of grace. While the soul is unestablished in the doctrine of the Divine Inspiration of the Scriptures—their full and verbal inspiration— there can be no firm foundation for faith to rest upon. While the soul is ignorant of the doctrine of Justification there can be no real and intelligent assurance of its acceptance in the Beloved. While the soul is unacquainted with the teaching of the Word upon Sanctification it is open to receive all the crudities and errors of the Perfectionists or "Holiness" people. While the soul knows not what Scripture has to say upon the doctrine of the New Birth there can be no proper grasp of the two natures in the believer, and ignorance here inevitably results in loss of peace and joy. And so we might go on right through the list of Christian doctrine. It is ignorance of doctrine that has rendered the professing church helpless to cope with the rising tide of infidelity. It is ignorance of doctrine which is mainly responsible for thousands of professing Christians being captivated by the numerous fallacies of the day. It is because the time has now arrived when the bulk of our churches "will not endure sound doctrine" (2 Tim. 4:3) that they so readily receive false doctrines. Of course it is true that doctrine, like anything else in Scripture, may be studied from a merely cold intellectual viewpoint, and thus approached, doctrinal teaching and doctrinal study will leave the heart untouched, and will naturally be "dry" and profitless. But, doctrine properly received, doctrine studied with an exercised heart, will ever lead into a deeper knowledge of God and of the unsearchable riches of Christ.
​

 

[kenrapoza]

Great quote! Once again, it hits the nail on the head.

 

[DD2008]

Thank God we don't have that problem in my Church. Our pastor is pretty solid.

 

[GQ Chris]

You know it's funny because I would always hear their lovey dovey sermons and i'd feel oh so ooey gooey on the inside. (Great adjectives, huh?) So I'd go home and open the bible to find out more about fluffy puff marshmallow God and closing the book in terror and thinking, "What book are they reading from?! This God isn't fluffy!" And that's where I started learning more about the real God.

Yes they are . The Pentecostal/Charismatic/Contemporvana churches always try to paint God like some kind of pushover instead of a merciful, but also wrathful God that when people really witness they fall to their faces.

 

[edie19]

one of several books I'm currently reading is Mark Dever's "9 Marks of a Healthy Church." The first mark is expositional (as opposed to topical) preaching. He says they can get the other 8 right, but if they don't have this one down it doesn't matter what their size is, what they accomplish as far as missions and such - if they don't teach God's Word correctly the rest doesn't mean much.

 

[desmalia]

[yah, I'm venting]


Just now I listened to another humanistic pep talk styled sermon.


Lord have mercy!


Please stop with the 3 point sermons.

Enough of the the human schemes to manipulate God.

Just read the word and offer an exegesis of it, don’t exegete your family, or tell a cute story…tell us about the text!

I thought of this post as I sat in church on Sunday.
Church is such a stressful miserable thing sometimes.
Praise God He is sovereign! I keep thinking of that when all that garbage gets me down.

 

[JM]

Remember, if you find the perfect church don't join. You'll only ruin it! (lol)

 

[desmalia]

Remember, if you find the perfect church don't join. You'll only ruin it! (lol)

Ya, ya, I know.

I don't expect perfect. Something at least trying to be biblical would be nice though...

 

[desmalia]

And if I have to hear that "Jesus I am so in love with you" song just one more time I might scream! lol.

 

[JM]

forget it.

 

[mlqurgw]

Remember, if you find the perfect church don't join. You'll only ruin it! (lol)

No I'll just do what so many others have and start my own perfect church.

 

[JM]

Church doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to have more going for it then good coffee and wifi...